Many Christians say they understand grace, but that “grace teaching” needs to be balanced. In other words, if people believe that they’ve really been forgiven and made righteous and that it has nothing to do with them, then they’ll rebel and engage in sin, since there will be no consequences. So, grace teaching, they argue, must be balanced by teaching about how to live a holy lifestyle.
But grace, by its very nature, is unbalanced. When God cut covenant with Abram he alone walked through the pieces of the sacrifices meaning that only He was bound to uphold the covenant. It didn’t rest on Abram at all. (Genesis 15) When Jesus died on the cross it wasn’t to get something from us, or make us act in a moral way, it was an act of grace born out of love.
We get this when it comes to salvation, because of course no one has to do anything to be saved, it’s simply a matter of belief, but we think that if we apply that same understanding to life after salvation we’ll end up with churches full of people taking advantage of grace and living however they want. So, we try to balance it. We want to teach them right living, because apparently we’ve never read the Old Testament to see how well that didn’t work.
But, by saying that grace needs to be balanced what are we really saying? What we’re really saying is that this Christian lifestyle can’t be lived by dependence on God alone, we need to play a part. It sounds very pious and unselfish, but it is pride at its most insidious. We don’t want something just given to us; we want to earn it. It’s just another measure of control that we want to exact over our own lives. It’s a way to not give God full access to us or full credit for what He’s done for us. Not to mention it puts our eyes back on ourselves, and not on Him where they should be and would be if we understood the beauty of the gift He’s given.
Grace is out of balance because God is love and His love is immeasurably extravagant.
When I hear the phrase “grace teaching needs to be balanced”, I think it means we also need to teach that faith without works is dead (James). That we also are called to DO good deeds. But you are right in that if the intention is to say “we can or must earn God’s grace”, then we are grossly mistaken.
Great Insight. The thing about a true understanding of grace is that it always leads to works because it allows God to work through us, which is why good works are the evidence of true faith. However, if those works are initiated by us, then they are wrongly motivated and an attempt to earn favor, protection, blessing, etc, which as you mentioned in the second part of you comment, is grossly mistaken.